The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-04-22
SLAVERY TO WALKING DELEGATES.
How an Honest and Industrious Workman
Was Hounded 10 Death.


Chicago Inter Ocean,
eugene OConnor a Door. consumptive SHOE
maker, ended the miseries of this life by knife.
which he applied to mis- throat in New York
clearinghouse on Monday last.
He was model workman faithful and true,
skilled and ambitious. He had been in the en-
ploy of Hanan & Son for twelve years, having
entered their service when he was not quite trir-
teen years of age Hanan & Son hire about five
hundred men, mostly for fine work, and Eugene
OConnor was rated by the firm among the
best. But his health was poor. Had he been
able to work full time he would have laid little
money by. for he was as sober and thrifty as he
was skillful and industrious. His employers
appreciated his worth and kept him on the pay
roll despite of frequent enforced absence.
Eugene frequently said that if he lost his place
with Hanan d Son he could find no other firm
to tolerate the Irregularities caused by his in
trinity. The relationship between Eugene and
Hanan & Son was the ideal of that which should
always subsist between employers and employed.
A few weeks ago it pleased the Knights OF
Labor to descend like wolf the fold of
Hanan 81 Son. There just person in
the employ OF the firm who was not a knight:
this person was young man, less than eighteen
years of age. He refused to become member,
and Hanan & Son. while cherishng no hostility
to organized labor, refused to discharge young
man who simply exercised the right of free
man in electing to keep out of what is supposed
to be "a voluntary association of workmen.'
Whereupon the high priests of the knights
ordered a strike and the whistle was blown.
OConnor was a knight. and went out with
sixty seventy Others Trade was dull, and
Hanan s. Son rather benefited than in
iured by the withdrawal of the strikers from the
wage list. AT the end of week many of the
strikers. OConnor among them. asked to be
taken back. O'Connor was taken back,
account of sympathy with his infirmty and
approval of his general good conduct This
sickly man had wife and two children depend
ent upon him.
No sooner had ha returned To work than the
walking delegates, gentlemen who array them
selves in fine linen and fare sumptuously. who
toll not, neither do they spin, proceeded to make
life burdensome to him. He was waylaid on the
streets he was visited at his home, he was be-
sieged by letters at his workshop: he was ad-
vised of the sin of continuing to earn living
for his wife and children in factory that pol
lured the air by the presence of small eighteen
year-old ''scab." Finally he was offered lib
eral allowance" weekly from the knights1 treas
ury if he would once more desert the employers
with whom his relations were so friendly In a
moment of weakness he consented. The only
moral nfrmity of this poor man was an I'M
| reasoning devotion to the tyranny of secret
| oligarchy. However, the boosted "iiberal al
| lowance' was not enough to keep his family
| alive He went back to Hanan & Son, and they
| received him.
Then the fury of he'll! was made manifest by
| the walking delegates. This poor, industrious.
sickly fellow. who had the quality of love of
| wife and children, was reyiled upon the streets
| threatened with violent assault, prosecuted
| with all .ne ingenuity which leisurely walking
| delegates could devise He was nervous by rea-
of long i'll health; doubly so by reason of ex-
element and persecution, added to i'll health.
| Shortly after he had gone to work for the last
time, the foreman noticed how feebly he
walked and, stopping him at the foot of the
stairs. said Come, go up in the elevator.
OConnor." He did so. and on the way up ne
said in a hopeless sort of way: II am almost
crazy, | don't know what to do. They are not
only trying to force me out of here, but now
| working and threaten that they will order a
strike there and then what viii we do for our
| selves and our childrens
| The rest is short. The desparing man wen,
| home and killed himself-butchered to feed the
| walking delegates. Tha. is the story. It needs
| no comment 1t is story of the most grinding
| despotism to which labor has ever been sub
| jected.
AT about the same time that Eugene OConnol
| poured out his life's blood at the altar WHEREOF
sacrifices to walking delegates made, mat
| named Patterson poured out another kind OF
blood. He, too had ''gone out" at orders from
the oilgharchs; he, too had gone back to worl
at the dictates of marital and fatherly affection
he, too, had been subjected to insult and abuse
from the regal walking delegates; the hand O.
violence had been stretched forth towards hin
| also. But Patterson was not a nervous man
He took from his pocket what Thomas Carlyle
once described "a sufficient Birmingham
pocket pistol" and there was meritorious sub
sidence of the walking delegate.
In what age do We live! Has this century
freed millions of negroes from slavery to CAPT
talists and invented slavery of white laborer
to walking delegates and to oligharchs from
whose treasury walking delegates paid.